A Zettelkasten Primer

A 15-MINUTE INTRO TO
ZETTELKASTEN
AN INNOVATIVE METHOD FOR TAKING NOTES AND WRITING IN THE
HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
PRESENTED BY JAKUB ANTOSZ-REKUCKI

ZETTELKASTEN—WHAT’S IN THE NAME?
• German der Zettel—a slip of paper, a note (potential Polish translations:

karteczka, notka, świstek)
• Der Kasten—a box
• English terms for the method: smart notes, atomic notes, slipbox notetaking,
Zettelksasten
WHAT IS IT AND WHY SHOULD I CARE?
• A method for:
• Making notes
• On the sources you read or analyse
• And on your own insights and ideas
• Shaping your notes into a structured network of ideas representing your research
• Producing better research (improving the quality) and improving the quantity of
publishable academic writing you do
NIKLAS LUHMANN

1927–1928

German sociologist and philosopher

Autopoietic theory of law; systems theory of
society

Published over 70 books and 400 articles
throughout his career while being a single father

Not to be considered the only inventor of the
Zettelkasten (similar practices documented for
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Carl Linnaeus, and
JFK)

“Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen,” 1992.
HOW DO I DO THAT?
(A VERY SIMPLIFIED SUMMARY)
• Make every single note as short as possible; ideally it should be on just a single idea
in your reading material or analysis, or a single, simple original insight you have.
• Include bibliographical reference.
• Add links to other notes that follow up, show similar thinking, provide argumentation
or evidence in support of the idea, or quite the contrary—disagree with or refute it.
• Revisit the notes repeatedly, follow the existing links, create new ones, add new notes
commenting upon the ones you have taken earlier.
THE WEB OF NOTES YOU CREATE WILL. . .
• Show you which trains of thought are more productive and worth exploring
• Which enticing ideas fail to find support in tangible argumentation/academic
consensus, etc., but also. . .
• Which paradoxical, new, underexplored ideas actually may lead to new insights and
developments
• More often than not, the connections between notes will provide a good preliminary
structure for your actual papers and chapters, speeding up the writing process.
BENEFITS—THE FINAL ANSWER TO “WHY
WOULD I WANT TO TRY THIS”
• Improved quality of your research
• Improved quantity of your publishable writing and overcoming the academic
writer’s block; when you face the blank page, you’ll already have a lot of
conceptual and structuring done beforehand
• Increased retention of material you read by the irregular revisiting of atomic
portions of information (spaced-repetition learning as a side-effect)
TOOLS TO IMPLEMENT YOUR OWN
ZETTELKASTEN
• Luhmann’s way: actual tiny slips of paper and a complex system of

alphanumerical IDs for “analog hyperlinks”
• A plethora of software options are available, as the Zettelkasten method has
been something of a hype in productivity coaching in recent years; only a
few programs well suited for actual academic work, though.
ORG ROAM
HTTPS://WWW.ORGROAM.COM/
• Free as in beer and free as in freedom (free and open source)

• A plugin for the free and open source Emacs text editor, the longest surviving computer
program (developed since 1976)
• The most powerful among my recommendations and what I personally use (“The
answer to the question ‘Can Emacs do that?’ is always ‘yes’)
• However, also the steepest learning curve: using Emacs and Org Roam requires some
knowledge of programming and coding (or you must assume you will learn
programming in the process).
ZETTLR
HTTPS://WWW.ZETTLR.COM/

• Overall the most intuitive among my recommendations
• A standalone text processor with full support for doing everything Word does, plus. . .
• Zettelkasten linking between the notes
• Automated citations with Zotero integration
• Organising shorter pieces of writing (Zettelkasten notes and then chapters) into a longer project
(e.g., a doctoral thesis)
• Easy export to nicely formatted output, including .docx, .pdf, .html, slide presentations, and others
LOGSEQ
HTTPS://LOGSEQ.COM/

• Easiest to use for Zettelkasten notetaking
• Organises all notes into bullet points (blocks) in respective file (pages), with
linking between both blocks and pages
• Automatically creates backlinks (shows you which notes link to the one you
are viewing at a given point) and a searchable, zoomable graph visualisation
of all your notes.
EXERCISE—SEE HOW ZETTELKASTEN
NOTETAKING WORKS IN LOGSEQ
• Download the folder “Try Logseq”
• Go to www.logseq.com
• Click the “Open a local folder” hyperlink. This will open an online demo of Logseq (you can download a desktop app later if you like it)
• Once Logseq opens, click the “open” icon in the upper right corner and choose the downloaded folder “Try Logseq.”
• Explore the content of this class in a Zettelkasten form, and try:
 Writing additional notes on your own
 Creating new links: you create a link to an existing note (page) by inserting double square brackets [[ ]] and typing; the full-text search
will find the note you’re looking for
 You can link individual blocks (bullet points) by using double regular brackets: (( ))
 You can create a new page (note) by typing double square brackets and the name of the note
 Click ESC to stop editing a bullet point and make the links clickable; click on a normal text within the bullet point to edit it again.
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What is a Zettelkasten?

Who invented the Zettelkasten method?

A 15-MINUTE INTRO TO

PRESENTED BY JAKUB ANTOSZ-REKUCKI

• German der Zettel—a slip of paper, a note (potential Polish translations:

• Luhmann’s way: actual tiny slips of paper and a complex system of

• Free as in beer and free as in freedom (free and open source)

• Free as in beer and free as in freedom (free and open source)

• Free as in beer and free as in freedom (free and open source)

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